Storm Elemental

Storm elementals are pretty much perky air elementals. They may be slower, but they pack quite a bit of zap, especially when you get to the bigger ones of the bunch. The little fellas can be pretty useful as a summoned ally, since their attacks actually deal sonic and electric damage at the same time. If one bit of hurt can't get through, the other one probably will.

They may well be the reason why airplanes and such never quite took off in fantasy worlds. Magical airships maybe have some kinda magical protection against storm elementals coming along and puncturing their balloons.

I like to think of these guys hanging around blue dragons, thunderbirds and the other big electric beasties of the sky, just hanging around them like remora on a shark.

Blanca’s Tumblr

Wyvern

Any village swineherd who has heard more than a single story about dragons is likely to come away with some half-formed impression of their grandeur. There's an argument to be made that this plays into the scheming of the dragons themselves - famously vain creatures that they are - but there is simply no denying that, by and large, drakes are a noble breed of great physical beauty. Chromatics: vast, snarling, scheming creatures, studded with scales of scarlet and topaz... Metallics: even larger in size but wise and meditative, sheathed in lustrous snakeskin like spun silver and gold... even the so-called lesser breeds, shoots that deviate from the stem of dragon-kind, usually retain some faded glimmer of their more magnificent cousins. Usually.

There is, they say, no beast that will quicker dispel the illusion of dragons as creatures of nobility as the Wyvern. Like a gangly, embarrassing cousin they are rarely acknowledged by the "true" breeds, yet they are far more numerous, which speaks, perhaps, to their pigeon-like success at populating the world.

Compared to the average Chromatic, the Wyvern is a stunted, bony parody of a dragon. Its body is barely larger than an elephant, its intelligence subhuman. Its scales range from mottled brown, through half-formed greens to pale, sandy yellows and whites, depending on its surroundings - the idea of camouflage is anathema to full-blooded dragons, but Wyverns will take their advantages wherever they can get them. Finally, and most markedly, Wyverns at some point deviated from their greater kin in the loss of their draconic forelimbs. This seems not to have affected them much, however, as they continue to scramble about deftly using their wings.

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Wyverns are great! This was fun to draw. I hope you like it!

Joe's tumblr

Redspawn Firebelcher

Like the bluespawn godslayer, the redspawn firebelcher is a mutation brought about by Tiamat's magic. Entirely lacking the dignity and majesty of true red dragons, the redspawn firebelcher is the stupidest of Tiamat's spawn. That doesn't make them any less dangerous, since the firebelcher is driven entirely by hunger. Other spawn might be able to control the firebelcher to use them as mounts and warbeasts, though they risk being eaten themselves. Despite the danger, Tiamat's spawn purposely starve the firebelcher in order to guarantee maximum ferocity.

Like all of Tiamat's more animalistic spawn, they exude an aura which protects nearby spawn from certain effects. In this case, it provides immunity to fire. This makes them potentially excellent mounts for whitespawn, since it can cancel out their weakness.

It's been a while since I've done anything for Dungeons & Drawings. I've been having a really really bad art block for the last several months. I didn't seem to like anything I drew. And while I still don't feel like I'm completely back to my comfort zone, I am gradually liking the last few things I've been drawing more.

Anyway, the firebelcher. Their entry describes them as often swimming around in lava pools. Well the first thought that came to my mind was crocodiles, but I really didn't want to go in that direction. The old red dragon illustration was vaguely mammalian anyway, so I went with basing this guy off a hippopotamus. Because hippopotami are horrendous nightmare beasts.

Blanca's Tumblr
 

Ahuizotl

Lurking in swamps, watery caverns and murky rivers, the ahuizotl hides just below the water's surface, hoping to exploit the altruism of anybody nearby by calling out like a lost, scared child. When someone rushes towards it to help, this creatures grabs them and drags them into the water. The hand at the end of its long, prehensile tail is especially strong, and used as a primary weapon. Even those who escape the ahuizotl are often blinded forever, since its first moves tend to be an attempts to rip out their victim's eyes.

While the ahuizotl feeds on people, it's very particular about which body parts it prefers. Corpses are found floating on the water, skin bruised but untouched, missing their eyes, teeth and fingernails.

You may have heard about this creature from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but the ahuizotl is a creature of Mexican myth. Meaning spiny aquatic thing, it's described as a dog-like creature with monkey- or raccoon-like paws and a human hand at the end of its tail. It's a bit up in the air as to whether it's smooth (as stated in the Florentine Codex) or spiky (like it's name implies).

In the mythology, the ahuizotl is an agent of the rain and water god Tlaloc. Those killed by the ahuizotl were either chosen ones transported to his afterlife, or sinner punished for hoarding. In D&D, it's implied to be a completely independent aberration. I don't know why they chose to make it an aberration instead of a magical beast or outside, since aberrations tend to be tentacley, squishy alien things.

Most drawings of the ahuizotl tend to play up the dog aspect, but a few other people have thought the true water dogs: seals otters. But I didn't base this on your squeaky cute Redwall river otters or cuddly (but distressingly horrible) sea otters. I took my inspiration from the 5-foot long, nightmare-eyed, caiman-and-anaconda-eating monstrosity that is the South American giant river otter.

Blanca's Tumblr

Lamia

The Lamia are a race of vaguely leonine centaurs which inhabit deserts. They are also fond of human flesh. The human half of the Lamia are exceptionally attractive. Well, possibly. Lamia are illusionists and charmers, capable of taking on human guise. Their touch also has a stupefying effect, making the effects of their spells all that more effective.

The illustration of the Lamia in the Monster Manual always kinda bothered me because everybody knows Lamia are snake-women duh Wizards. Well turns out the duh may be a bit on me. Doing a bit of research of the monster actually revelead a few things. For starters, there are numerous interpretations of what the Lamia looked like, among which is a woman who is a snake from the waist down. But it seems like the D&D Lamia was inspired by the Lamia from Topsell's The History of Four-Footed Beasts, a 17th century book, though that illustration may have been inspired by an even earlier one. Helps make it a bit different from Medusa and Naga.

The Greek myth of the Lamia is actually a somewhat interesting and confused one. The bare bones is Lamia is a Lybian princess who has the misfortune of catching Zeus' eye. She gives birth to babies, Hera kills her babies (and makes Lamia eat them), and Lamia is driven mad by grief and rage. She feels compelled to steal children and devour them. At some point she turns into a monster, the physical appearance of which is left vague. Also she can't close her eyes, but is able to remove them from her head. From that point on she tends to get mythologically confused with drakainae (female dragons), and empusa and lamaie (succubi and vampires). The Greek gods were jerks.

So the Lamia is one of many monsters seen worldwide throughout folklore: that of a woman who loses/kills/eats her children and goes to do the same to other children. La Llorona seems like the most modern version of that archetype, though I wouldn't be surprised if there were urban legends that followed a similar narrative pattern.

REDUX MONTH: Will O Wisp

Redux number three is the Will O Wisp. I think that out of all of the images I've done for this blog, that particular one is my most hated. Partially because it's so ugly but also because it feels like the intention I had behind it was pretty strong and was unable to carry it out. I'd been inspired by a book called Art Forms from the Ocean, a collection of prints by Ernst Haeckl of microscopic sea animals and plants. They're all pictures of quite beautifully geometric living things.

Which I guess means I copped out a bit by doing a good deal more typical Will O Wisp: a floating flame. But I'm still more pleased with this one than the older version. At least this is well drawn and kinda cute.

Fun fact: an alternate name for the Will O Wisp is the Hinkypunk. I remember reading that in one of the Harry Potter books (Prisoner of Azkaban, I think), describing the Hinkypunk as a one-legged creature that carries a lantern to lead people into bogs. I always thought that it was a creature that Rowling had made up, but it would seem it's a legit alternate version of the Will O Wisp.

Fun fact number two: a Hinkypunk (i.e. the one-legged dude) appears towards the end of Spirited Away, leading Chihiro to the Zeniba's house.

Belker

 

The Belker is yet another monster that I never paid very much attention to, just kinda going 'ehhh' whenever I came to it's entry and moving on to fire horses and other more traditionally cool monsters. I finally got around to actually reading its entry and I realized, holy canoli, this fella is hella horrifying. You know Scratchtasia? That Itchy and Scratchy version of Fantasia where Scratchy chops up Itchy into powder, then accidentally breathes him in, and then a million microscopic Itchies hack him to pieces from the inside? That's essentially what a Belker can do to you.

These creatures are air elementals assossiated with the more smokey aspects of air. They appear as vaporous devils, though they can turn into actual clouds of smog that can either casually float away or do the earlier mentioned shenanigans to your respiratory system. 

Ettin

Ettin are a famously idiotic subspecies of giant, best recognised by the twin traits of being both two-headed and vastly unhygienic. The extra head apparently does nothing for their overall smarts but does allow them to much better co-ordinate two-weapon fighting, as each head governs control of one arm.

The language typically spoken by Ettin is a crude pidgin of Orc, Goblin and Giant, and actually requires a linguistics skill check (DC 15) for speakers of these languages to even understand them, which I find sort of sweet. There's a sort of sterotype for lumbering two-headed giants (things like Warcraft and Dota come to mind) so I really wanted to use a different body shape - Blanca suggested arranging the two heads vertically rather than horizontally, which seemed a pretty cool idea. Otherwise I was looking at the ever-awesome Wind Waker concept designs for inspiration on this one (I guess because the pig-like description of the Ettin reminds me of a Moblin).

- Joe

Xorn

Xorns are curiously neutral within the food chain of the world. Strange, elemental creatures of rock, they have little interest in soft-fleshed creatures, consuming instead the raw materials of the earth to sustain themselves. Hardly encountered by any except earth-digging races like Dwarves and Gnomes, a Xorn's voracious appetite for gold and gems, coupled with its extraordinary ability to glide through rock and earth without leaving any sort of disturbance, can make it a huge nuisance. In Xorn-populated areas, Dwarves are wise to line their treasure-rooms with lead or steel - Xorns are unable to pass through metallic substances in this way - although the fearsome strength of an Elder Xorn will still make short work of such defences.

The description of a Xorn in the first Monster Manual makes it sound almost like an earth elemental or a construct - a "stonelike" body, "stone-lidded eyes" - so I thought I'd take it away from the twisted, frog-like depiction in the illustration and more towards my preferred chunky, geometrical look. If the arms were segmented they'd remind me of those Laputa-esque robots in the fleetway Sonic comics.

The description of the Xorn's Earth Glide ability is kinda weird as to how you might visualise it. As with the Phase Spider I'd need to animate that blue-edged glow to properly communicate how it's meant to look! Maybe one day.

- Joe

Tengu, Human-Headed

Aaaaaand here's the other kind of Tengu you can fight.

Many monsters have stats given for more powerful versions (to scale with the level of your PCs) - most of them are simple HD addition but for some the book gives a distinct second form, sometimes with new abilities. For the Tengu you can either face a CR1 Bird-Headed Tengu or a CR6 Human-Headed Tengu (both variations exist in Japanese folklore). Interestingly, the human-headed variety is much smaller, relying less on strength and more on craftiness and spells.

I love Tengu in mythology (particularly the red-faced interpretation). It's a commonly recurring motif in a lot of Japanese media, not least with KOF's Mr Karate and that one episode of Great Detective Conan where they go the the hot springs, both of which informed my picture. I find the traditional face very pleasing in a sculptural way.

Salamander

Salamanders are serpentine creatures from the Elemental Plane of Fire. Like a lot of fiery creatures, they're the sort of monster that you don't want to touch unless you've got your fire resistance spells up. Or like blisters. They can also transfer heat through their weapons so there's that too.

They're not especially strong creatures, though they're quite intelligent and difficult to damage unless you've got some magic weapons (which you should probably have if you were doing the planar travel shenanigans). They make pretty good guardians if you need your temple guarded by something that can probably subsit on coal and wood. They also have a tendency to get summoned by people who want them some finely crafted metalworks, since these guys are also very skilled blacksmiths.

There are different levels of salamander too. You've got your average salamander, which is pretty dangerous. There's also smaller guys called flamebrothers, which tend to get pushed around by their larger bretheren. Then you have salamander nobles, which can get pretty big, are master smiths and have all sorts of nasty fire-based spells that include summoning Huge fire elementals.

Bring some oven gloves and some cold spells is what I'm saying.

Rot Reaver

Rot Reavers are brawny, hunched, simian creatures, their green skin calloused with years of caked-on gore. They subsist by consuming the flesh of others - but unlike most normal carnivores they savour the taste of the rancid, festering meat of the undead.

Brandishing a pair of magical cleavers (around which their enormous twin tongues wrap, to further relish the flavour of the blood), they swing like demonic butchers, hungrily and recklessly. Recipents of a Rot Reaver's attack beware: the wound will magically fester, and should its victim die the body will be brought back into unlife under the Rot Reaver's control, to either serve or feed it!

I love how wonderfully horrible the Rot Reaver is. I'm a firm believer that there's a certain point at which excessive violence and gore reaches a sort of critical mass and crosses over from "juvenile obsession" into an outright art form. That point, as we all know, is Peter Jackson's Braindead.

Ormyrr

The Ormyrr are, in many ways, a noble race; they have merely been dealt something of an ignoble genetic hand. Descended from slug-like creatures living in the silt deposits of rivers, they have nonetheless risen to form societies comparable in intelligence with those of humans, although the individuals are giant - averaging around 30 feet long in adulthood.

The chief failing among the Ormyrr is their utter dearth of any magical adeptitude. Whether by chance or intent, the Ormyrr are genetically incapable of producing mages or magic-sensitive offspring. In a colourful world of wizards and magical monsters this has bestowed the Ormyrr with a jealous fascination with all things magical - they hoard enchanted items for use as currency and commonly attack the owners of any they find. Some say the ultimate goal of the Ormyrr is to finally breed a sorcerer.

In an odd counterbalance to their jealousy the Ormyrr are fastidiously law-abiding creatures. Many have escaped death at their hands by appealing to their deep-seated sense of right and wrong.

Myconid

Myconids are the mushroom-people. Something quite well suited for your Mario-themed D&D game I suppose. They live to about 24 years of age, getting larger and stronger with each passing year until the ruler of a circle of myconids is about 12 feet tall. They do a good many things via spores, the main three being communication (initating a telepathing link with someone), alarm and reproduction. Older myconids can use their spores to pacify and cause hallucinations --essentially drugging the target-- and to briefly reanimate dead bodies as vaguely fungoid puppets. Eventually the eldest mushroom-man is able to produce potions, which I like to think is actually some organically generated goo rather than something from a cauldron.

So I guess if you do want to use these guys for your Mario-themed D&D game, having an older myconid around can really give it more horrifying angle.

I like mushrooms. They're a delicious piece of not-plant. I also like how weird they look; there are some that you could look at and be astounded to find that they are, in fact, a mushroom. All of the myconids in this image take inspiration from different kinds of mushroom, varying in crazy looks and deliciousness.

GUEST WEEK: Forsaken Shell by Tony Comley

Something moves in the corners of your torch light as you enter the room. A piece of fabric? But there's no wind here. It moves again. A bundle of snakes? But it's flesh-coloured and saggy, and as it drags itself closer you see among the twisted skin tangles of boneless fingers and a skull-less human face.

Something for a horror campaign. A Forsaken Shell is an empty skin with imbued unlife, motivated by vengeance. Despite its appearance, it's horribly elastic and agile. Once it gets a horrible flaccid hand on you, it begins to wrap itself around you and squeeze. Perhaps it's some kind of feeble-minded attempt to take over your solid, structured form. In D&D campaign, skin wears you!

And then it kills you and your guts and bones dissolve as you become another awful slithering skin.

Image brought to you by Tony Comley, a director at Sherbet studios. Just lookit how gross this thing is.

Abeil (animated)

THIS S IS ANIMATED YOU SHOULD FOR RIZZLES CLICK THE PICTURE



Now that that's out of the way, this is an Abeil... vassal. A vassal is probably most accurate.

The Abeil are a race of tall, industrious bee-like humanoids. Their society is divided into three castes: vassals (the workers, in all different roles of society), soldiers and a queen. The worker is obviously the weakest of these three, but still possess a muscle-atrophying poison and the ability to create a buzz with their wings that leaves enemies into a sleepy stupor. Soldiers also have an amplified eardrum-rupturing version of this.

Like many insects, Abeils like to expand their territory, partially through economic means, which may or may not be good for any other surrounding cultures.

And now for my biological lecture for anybody who cares to read far enough down to this bit. I know why they seperated abeil society into worker-soldier-queen society: it makes for easy classification into who the commoners, the ones you fight and the one you diplomatize with are gonna be. Actual bee society is also quite interesting in that it's a worker-drone-queen society, where the all-female workers do all the work and defending of the hive. The stingless, all-male drones exist purely for the purpose of mating with the queen, usually of a different hive, since the queen stores all the genetic material necessary from previous drones for her 3-5 year lifespan.

The queen is also a really interesting thing. While the term 'queen' implies control, she's a slave to the hive. She literally spends her whole life laying eggs, and if she ever stops, the workers will raise a larva to become the new queen, which will kill the old one. Beekeepers usually imprison the queen in a certain section of the hive, so we can enjoy delicious, larva-free honey.

Also a little bit disappointed that abeils don't have a racial penalty to smoke-based attacks.

Will O Wisp

Before being allowed out of the Hybsil's home forest, Buck is taken away, blindfolded. When released he finds himself in a dark glade, alone. It's night, and the trees, the bushes and the stream are all black and grey in the starlight. As he looks around, he finds himself surrounded by small lights, which bob around him with interest and as his panic swells, so do they.

Oy, sorry about being so late these past few weeks. Anyway, this is the reponse to the Buck poll for what test he should be put through before leaving (answer: test of courage).

The Will O Wisp is a creature of English folklore. They were little lights, like distant lanterns that would appear in swamps and maliciously lure lost travellers to dangerous terrain. Now we know that Will O Wisp is actually just swamp gas, which is just a combination of chemicals that sometimes becomes incandescent in swamps.

In D&D, they're still monsters though. They're pretty minor as things go, being able to do little more than go invisible, shock if you get close. But they're still tough to deal with, since they're pretty strong, invulnerable to most forms of magic, and are difficult to hit due to their size and luminous nature. They hang around dangerous or disorienting areas, because they feed on fear.

DRAGON MONTH: Yu Lung (Carp Dragon)

Yu Lungs, otherwise known at Carp Dragons are the infant form Oriental dragons. They're born in rivers, lakes and ponds, and live in mud palaces of their own making. They're the least impressive, weak and least intelligent of these dragons, and their only magical talent is mild telepathy. They never grow larger than a man. After a hundred years they transform with a thunderclap, entering one of many adult forms available to them.

Joe's already written apologies for our delay, but I feel I should also extend them.

Anyway, trying NOT to do one of the more classic dragons from the manuals. This one was fun. I especially enjoyed covering my eyes so I wouldn't look at the illustration in the book so I wouldn't be at all influenced by it. Decided to go for a bit of a koi look with this.

Necropolitan

When you reach the tower where the princess is held captive, you find a withered woman dressed in silks, gems and a delicately coiffed wig. Lipstick would do little to emphasize something that's long since shrunken back so close to the skull. And what would eyeliner do to eyes already so shadowed within such dark eyesockets? You'd be horrified, but your mission was to rescue the princess of Nocturnus, city of the undead.

Necropolitans were a new player race introduced in the horror-themed Libris Mortis. The idea with them is that you asked already-existing necropolitans for permission to join their numbers. If they accepted you, you go through a long and painful process where life energy is drained through your body and is replaced with negative energy. Unlike, say, a lich, another intelligent undead whose own willing transformation from living to dead involves concentrated evil, necropolitans aren't necessarily members of the dark side.

The book kinda implies that they're just really reserved, serious scholars who'd prefer to be left alone by anyone who thinks the undead are shambling abominations.

Wendigo

The Wendigo is a malevolent spirit of the cold wastes, driven by purely by hunger. It has no feet, and leaves no tracks on the ground. Sometimes its body turns misty and can't be seen but out of the corner of your eye. You're more likely to hear him that see him, his gibbering laughter sweeping across the empty landscape like with.

So the winner of last week's poll was Middle Eastern / Indian monsters and North American monsters, with an equal amount of votes. I decided to pick North American monsters, since they're under-represented in modern fantasy culture outside the odd shaman, thunderbird and, of course, Wendigo.

Fun fact! Apparently the word Wendigo comes from the proto-Algonquian "wintekowa", possibly meaning "owl". At least according to the internet. Maybe they were freaked out by the hooting of owls at night? Anyway, that's why I decided to give the Wendigo a more rounded head instead of something wolfy or deer-like, like a lot of modern fantasy does.

I decided to play on the description in the D&D books that says they have a Corner of the Eye ability. Whenever a wendigo Wind Walks, they can never been looked at directly, always seeming to appear just out of your field of vision. This was pretty tricky, and I decided to try to employ the Hidden Face illusion trick. I'm not sure how well it worked though, so you guys'll have to tell me.

Man, I'm late this week.

Did a little bit more work with the tags this past week. Monsters are now also orginized by alignment (chaotic, lawful, evil, good, neutral) and whether they're template creatures.